


Quietus

by 11dishwashers



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Hometown AU, M/M, Thriller, winter break au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 02:25:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12098649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11dishwashers/pseuds/11dishwashers
Summary: A shrine, an estranged mother, a dead kid sister, an annoying roommate, and a mysterious heart throb.Jongdae's winter break sure is looking busy.





	Quietus

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [cc_round4](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/cc_round4) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> jongdae doesn't really understand why he shouldn't go near the shrine nestled in the forest on the outskirts of town like his mother tells him. he doesn't believe in ghosts or monsters who steal people's souls or whatever. in fact, upon visiting said shrine, he even meets a handsome gentleman named junmyeon, whose sweet voice and intriguing personality keeps bringing jongdae back for more. there's no way junmyeon could be part of the scary stories jongdae's mother always tells him about the shrine, right?
> 
> **Want:** happy ending if possible, however vague/sad ending is good too, top!suho if smut
> 
> A/N: Thank you prompter! This was a really fun one to write~

Snow didn't blanket. It, more or less, replicated the surface of a torn up football pitch. With the small holes for the studs to fit in, too- football was one of the only things to do in such a small ""town"". There was the thinning snow, worn out from people trying clear their driveways with complaints and bags of salt. Huge heaps lining the curbs. Jongdae prayed for his pair of increasingly less valuable converse, he really should've brought boots instead, but Seoul was pretty on top of it's 'roads that are actually driveable' game, and he'd forgotten just how shit his hometown was with that. His feet were soaked and cold and size 9 UK, apparently.

He didn't have a car. He didn't even have a license, and the train station was far enough away that he had back-of-the-ankle blisters by the time his barely recognizable childhood home came into view. It was unnaturally cubic, with ribboned roof tiles that were all slopey, curvy, and the front door with the same coat of red paint that was at the end of its lifecycle. The plants were all dead- this winter was a harsh one; back at his dorm, his roommate had systematically taken all their window plants in so they wouldn't wither away. But they were rooted in pots, whereas the unkempt flowerbeds his mother didn't take care of were in the ground, cracking through the cement of the garden path. Jongdae wanted to join them a little bit. His fucking shoes were ruined, and he had even saved up for them. Strange things could make a college student suicidal. Instead of burying himself alive though, he knocked on the front door, and more paint chipped off; dotted the snow red. The hallway light switched on, orange poured through the porch window, Jongdae waited. He could've been tapping his foot impatiently and he wouldn't have known- everywhere was numb. When the door flung open, he flung himself inside, just the same.

"Hello to you too," his mother said, obviously pitying him. He huffed and his breath was visible in the warm house air. 

"Hi, mam," he said to her, somewhat as an afterthought. He trudged upstairs to the ironing cupboard and found these thick, fluffy socks that his sister used to wear when she faked sick and missed school. They fit him too(even though he had grown since he last visited he was still short), and they had little blue and white snowflake patterns. Amazing. 

His mother didn't seem at all surprised, as she'd since went back to her permanent seat in front of the tv, and subsequently, Wheel of Fortune. She hadn't seen him for weeks and she still cared more about winning a microwave, or one of those toasters that could boil eggs in a little plastic jug while it made toast at the same time. Jongdae expected no less, and thought he might leave her there for a bit so he could nap, or something. Not that he hadn't already napped on the train. The good and bad thing about the train journey, was that his stop was near the very end. So he could sleep, but then again, he also  _ had  _ to sleep otherwise he'd become boredom's latest victim. 

His room was little more than his mother's supply room? Walk in closet? No, dump. It was like one of those rooms you saw on Extreme Hoarders, with those slightly fucked chairs that said hoarders picked out from bonfire pits on halloween morning. Except there were ironing boards. Too many, really, for a house with one person living in it. Some were toppled on their sides, with their covers(corn on the cob patterned) rumpled against the floor. Jongdae made his way through the maze of ironing board skeletons.   
Across the room was his bed, which had once been covered in Pokemon stickers that were placed on and peeled off about a thousand surfaces before ending up on his bed posts, where they had a very short lifespan before falling off. But the bed paint had faded around them a bit, so he had odd little Bulbasaur silhouettes scattered about the wooden planks. He ran a finger over them, smooth and fresh with dust. His hometown was a very boring place. So boring that if he'd been writing his experience of visiting it down in the third person, he'd get 500 words dedicated to things like snow and ironing boards, and other things of little to no substance. Or maybe it was all foreshadowing. He smiled a bit at the thought, because he'd be spending the rest of the following week vacuuming or something. He probably wouldn't need to borrow his sister's forgotten shoes(which were skewed about her floor) until Wednesday, at least, when his mother would inevitably  beat him out the door until he was standing alone, on the porch, holding a shopping list and an empty plastic bag with the Spar logo on it. There were no Spars in the whole country, probably. Boy, she really was a hoarder.    
He laid down on the duvet, which was cold beneath him for the two, three minutes that he felt it, and then he was sitting up again, bored. He went back downstairs, sort of dragging his feet across the wooden floors. The fluffy socks meant he was sliding everywhere anyway. In the sitting room, his mother was predictably watching the lottery. She looked at him so still, and her eyes couldn't be more tired. The way her face bunched like a rubber mask was incredible. She didn't usually look this tired. Not even in the hall a few minutes ago. Then, like her skin was pulled from the back and pegged, her wrinkles seemed to disappear and her face shifted back to normal.

She smiled, said "I lost," and the lotto ticket was lying in her hand. It probably had Jongdae's birthday circled, or his sister's. He couldn't tell because he'd left his glasses upstairs, but it was her little habit. She'd say it was for luck. "I got to four numbers, and then they called out August instead of September,” she spitted out, like spite was stuck to the roof of her mouth. 

"I don't think the lotto works in months," Jongdae told her, though she already knew. She gestured for him to sit down on the other sofa. For a while, he watched ads for mug soup on the tv. "Wow, this is so boring," he said, and really meant it.

It was winter break, which meant "wow! vaycay!" for a fair amount of Jongdae's friends, but for him, it meant an annual visit to his hometown. Or, what was left of it. No one was especially sure about the whole thing. It killed Jongdae a bit. He'd grown up with all these people who just seemed to disappear, packed away to Seoul like shipping containers being sent out of a factory, though Jongdae wasn't exactly sure what the town made, and what made the town. Now that everyone had gone, left the older generation to stew about through their old age, the town was more lifeless than ever. When he'd arrived and had seen the lights in the Do household switched off, he'd known. It was a bundle of meters away from Jongdae's house, as most things were few and far between in the town(more like a valley), and it was the biggest residence around. The windows were tall and peaked high, and Kyungsoo used to sit by them while reading, you'd see him after school through the glass, you'd wave. He never did go to school, after all. He was a sickly boy. You could see it- his pale, veiny hand, skin like crepe paper; he'd adjust his glasses with shaky fingers, he'd wave back to you. His hair was always messy and waywards. Someone inside must have cut it- the Dos didn't let anyone near him. It wasn't a trust issue. But, as Jongdae had passed the house by earlier, he'd seen the old sunroom, with its white roof slanting inwards; circular window at the top to see the sky through. He'd seen it, yeah. His skin prickled, heart threatened to burst open his esophagus with its thudding. His body had known before he did; his body had known that he was being watched. He didn't watch back, he couldn't with the darkness. But between those eight windows of the sunroom, there was something. Watching. Waiting, maybe. 

He'd walked faster. Nearly ran. It heated his blood through the cold, and then he was at his home's door, cooling down from standing still. The moment, like the rest, had passed. Skip ahead a bit and he was bored, and unsure of himself. It was easy to forget what he'd felt when it happened constantly. Well, it used to. He'd always be walking and expecting to see another pair of shoes, in sync with his steps, as he looked at the ground. But that was before university, and then after, it became more uncommon. Another perspective was added- one where he experienced no such feelings, and could finally recognise them as out of the ordinary. So, he was bored and unsure. 

He told his mother all of this, quickly and stupidly. He stuttered a fair bit. His mouth couldn't catch up with his brain, mostly. Her eyes flitted away from the tv, towards him, for a second or two. She blinked like it was sunny, all squinty. "It started again?" She paused. "Did you see anyone around town?" 

"What?" Jongdae said, bewildered. "What's that got to do with anything?" 

Her eyes followed the wheel on tv, spinned, rolled, rolled. Her mouth was pressed into a line. "People were asking after you, I was just curious."

He shrugged it off. 

"Go to the shrine," she said after a while, "it used to help you. Do you remember?"

Jongdae did remember; he was young and blabbermouthed, and his father would walk him up to the shrine on his off days so he'd feel better. It was far enough from the house, a nice little walk. His sister would carry her dolls up in a shopping bag and sit on the carved steps, making them talk to each other- this happened everyday after school. Sometimes, before school too, she'd beg and cry and squirm about not wanting to class, just wanting to play on the shrine steps. Jongdae would call her a baby. He had too much shame to admit that he'd follow her up, if he had the chance. 

He felt uncomfortable suddenly, in the room with his mother. Stifled. She was watching him, too, like he was an insect in a jar. She was worried about him. He knew his childhood was a bit shaky here and there, but that was just it. Here and there. He had constants in his life- friends, and schoolwork, and the cold, carved shrine steps-

"I'm going to bed," he said, "tired and all," he even added a yawn for maximum believability. When he looked, her eyes were trained on the screen still. That didn't add up. Her chest rose, and fell, and that's how he knew she was alive; that she'd heard him. Her lack of objection was a pardon enough. 

 

~~~

 

He'd set off in late morning. The shrine wasn't far enough to justify leaving any earlier, and he wouldn't have done it anyway. It was up on a hill, through gradually thinning branches that never seemed to stop whatever they were doing. Jongdae didn't remember much, but it was practically muscle memory at this point- his body moved him, and he didn't have to move his body. He felt like he was following routine again, or that he was replicating what a different version of him would've done, if he'd stayed. Another routine; the feeling that he'd see someone else's tracks, but they'd be fresh and just behind him. The air thinned the higher he rose up the mountain. Before, he'd never felt alone, even when he was, but now he truly was by himself. He didn't look back at the tatters of the town. He didn't look forward, either. Just down at the grass, expecting to see footprints surface from the dirt. He was expecting them and when they showed, he still snapped his head up in shock. 

There was a figure in the distance. It was being whittled away at by the branches as it went up the mountain peak, but it was there. And wearing hiking boots apparently, ones that left unnaturally large prints. Under the sun, in the distance, they shone faintly, like scratched up tin  metal. 

Jongdae stopped walking. For someone reason, he'd feel like he was following if he kept going. And he knew what being followed felt like- it wasn't very nice. He'd never felt less scared in his life, though there was no way to tell why. Back when he thought there'd been someone in the Do's sunroom, no evidence, his heart had been in his throat. But seeing a figure in this almost, abandoned town- one where the old inhabitants couldn't make it up the mountain without breaking their spines- he only felt intrusive. Intrusive enough to turn around so he was overlooking the town again. There were no cars, just match box shaped houses that were more like shelters. It was a wonder they had cable, really. He stayed like that for a while, just watching.

"Um, excuse me," said a voice from behind him. He very nearly tripped and fell all the way down the hill, bringing his sister's hiking boots and her old jacket with him; sometimes it helps to have someone taller you can scab clothes off, even if it is  your kid sister. "Are you walking up to the shrine too?" the voice then asked, and it was boyish and just a bit full, like every word didn't need a sentence to go with it. Jongdae couldn't explain it for the life of him, but the tone was definitely there. He remembered to turn.

The figure was no longer a figure. They were one and the same, though; it was the boots, and they were sort of metal tipped like armour. Jongdae had noticed them from afar, and he noticed them still, because they were also one(two?) and the same. The figure was another man, around Jongdae's own age if he had to guess. He had a round enough face, handsome features that were soft around the edges. Harmless. His mouth twisted up a bit, like he'd known the type of person Jongdae was already- a starer, an admirer of beautiful things. Jongdae wanted a photo of the guy. Shame, he'd left his canon back on his desk, it sat on top of some loose papers and the strap ribboned around a red ink stain, that looked pink on the white surface. He'd never wanted a photo of anything in the town before, no matter how interesting. It wasn't a place to be recorded, documented. Jongdae respected it, though maybe he just feared it, after all. 

"Me?" he said. Stupid. "Yeah, I am."

"Good, we should walk together," the guy smiled. He'd already lifted a foot up, planted it in the slope of dirt. It was a steep hill. You'd get vertigo, if you had the guts to look down. Jongdae didn't most of the time. There was always a time for change, he supposed, a step behind him yet far beneath him, the ground churned in spirals and bobbed out of reach. Jongdae blinked, dizzy. He could throw up. Heights were awful, in his expert opinion. He'd know- back in Seoul, near christmas, he went on this huge fair ride that spun around like the second hand on a clock, maybe faster. He'd gotten sick in a bin after sitting in front of the food stands on a stone bench for thirty minutes. Baekhyun had laughed at him, and Jongdae said that the smell of vomit could double as cologne, if you really thought about it. He wasn't keen on trying it in the presence of this new guy, who was striding up the mountainface, expecting him to follow. Jongdae scurried, because he had too. 

When he caught up, the guy had pink cheeks from facing the cold, and a muted expression. He seemed nice enough. Any average person would be in a worse state, what with the altitude, and the time of the year. "It's always nicer to walk with someone else, don't you think?" He was one of those people that'd turn your direction when they spoke to you, even if you were talking in a group. Suited Jongdae; the guy was, as mentioned, quite attractive in his own way. In the way that he didn't make Jongdae want to run home, steal his sister's fluffy socks, slip under the covers, lose sleep. It was the kind of attractive where you'd want to keep it, if you could, like how you pick flowers and put them in a vase until they wither into dried stems. 

"I used to walk up here with my sister," Jongdae replied, rather dutifully. "We were kids. Now I'm back here for winter break."

"Ah," the guy said, "I'd wondered why you'd come here. I saw you on the mountain, and thought, holy shit! That guy isn't 80!" 

Jongdae snorted. "It's a pretty depressing place, huh?" 

"Not so much now," the guy smiled back at him, and it looked really movies hot, even though his gums were showing. Some people just defied the laws of physics. Jongdae wished that the guy would keep saying stuff like that, because after, it'd warm his face up. He was a shameless flirt back on campus, but things reverted when he came here. There weren't girls around when he grew up, and the girliest pair of hands he'd seen weren't even a girl's, not his sister's, just Do Kyungsoo's as they'd flip through a yellowed book, with all the tubes jutting out for where his blood should've ran through. Jongdae was rusty; hadn't tried to bed someone since that incredibly disappointing frat party Baekhyun forced him to go to. When he left campus for break, he'd probably thrown his college personality into the ticket disposal thingy on the train up, and spotted his old self on the platform before he stepped off. That's why he couldn't flirt back, he reasoned. He wasn't in the right mind. 

They walked all the way up to the peak. The guy seemed a bit clammy, or something. The pressure was high up there, Jongdae supposed. He wondered if all the pressure affected his sister's brain at all, which was incredibly stupid of him, they knew it was from meningitis, or something. It began with 'm'- Jongdae was sure. 

The shrine had stood on the peak, with cold grey stone that raised up from the earth in a full circle. Upon it, there stood a box of stone that was carved to look a bit like a house. There was a cross on top. No one in the town was religious, but they must've been at some point, because there was a small virgin mary in the box facing outwards. Well, it wasn't facing outwards; its head was snapped off. It hadn't been before. Jongdae could picture its old expression, with the eyes painted on like a puppet's. It used to look deader with its head. 

When Jongdae was very young, there was a shrine maiden. She wore a red and white robe that swivelled when she moved. She was young, too, early 30s. And she just left one day. They didn't need a shrine maiden- his mother told Jongdae this- she must've gotten fed up. Why would they need a shrine maiden when no one even needed the shrine in the first place?

In any case, the virgin mary's head was missing. Her neck was jagged, like the end of a broken bottle- sharp  points sticking upwards. The points were unpainted, though the rest of her was blue and white. Jongdae leaned over, folding a knee onto the raised circle, and ran a finger over the chapped edges. His finger was pierced when he pulled his hand away. Blood beaded just above his nail. 

"Was she always... like that?" The guy asked, peering closer at the thing. He didn't seem disappointed, more curious. He clearly wasn't here for religious reasons at least. There wouldn't be that shine in his eyes, the kind of shine that appeared while you watched a car crash, silently glad. 

"First I've seen her headless," Jongdae replied, and this just made the guy more gleeful. He really was morbid, huh. Life was so boring that this caused a bit of excitement. 

"It's strange when you say it that way," he was less looking down at the virgin mary, and more away from Jongdae, "Headless, like it's human."

The steps were scorching white from the sun. It left flashing imprints on your eyes if you looked for too long. They rose up to the back of the box, chunky and useless, but if you sat on them you could stare at the town all day. As if you'd want to. Jongdae could picture his sister laying out her go cards on them, even when it was windy, and then they'd all fly away. Once a card had resurfaced in their back garden. The edges were battered smooth, and the red faded to pink. Other things had happened to it too. Red could be reapplied. 

But Jongdae had wondered if that was less the wind, or the mountain, or its trip back, and more his sister. He wouldn't say it out loud, though, and then it was suddenly a bit late. No one expected it when she left first- she'd become an apprentice to a hairdresser in Seoul, and had packed all she cared about into a deliberately shoebox-sized backpack. No use for empty space. 

He felt wrong sitting on the steps, like he was occupying her space, however forgotten. So he sat on the raised circle instead. The guy had lost interest in the statue since, at least he seemed to. Jongdae hadn't but he wasn't about to say it. 

"If you were wondering," and Jongdae probably was, "My name's Junmyeon."

Junmyeon had been staring down at the ground when he told him this. He smiled and welcomed himself to the "seat" next to Jongdae, kept running a hand through his hair, which was curly and brown and probably obnoxious to have, but very un-obnoxious to look at. Against his better judgement, Jongdae let himself take Junmyeon's smile in, just so he'd know for sure it was attractive. Just so he could agonise over it a little further. His liver would probably give out from stress, or was that alcohol? Or his hair would fall out in one huge clump, and roll across the town like a blonde tumbleweed, and no one would be around to notice, but tumbleweeds were only ever around to be unobserved anyway. Jongdae felt like that sometimes. It was inaccurate- he was very observed by Baekhyun's cinematography classmates, as he'd always be badgered into acting in little reels. He was no good at it, or anything. Baekhyun was the kind of friend that wanted you to succeed in things related to them, even if you couldn't succeed at all. It was more fun than embarrassing anyway. 

"I'm Jongdae," he told Junmyeon, who smiled a bit wider and looked right at Jongdae, making eye contact that was hard to maintain. His eyes were almost black. They seemed like pinholes, letting in the bare minimum of brown to shine through the center. They were sitting close, Jongdae realised. He'd never have noticed otherwise. 

"It's nice to meet you," Junmyeon said. Jongdae couldn't help but laugh at him, even though it was rude.

"Sorry," he said after, feeling his eyes crinkle. He took a breath even though he wasn't even laughing that hard. "It's nice to meet you, too."

They talked about very generic things, like what age they each were, and where they were from, and they both gave vague and generic answers. Jongdae's friend from college, Yixing, had gone to an international high school, and had described an english speaking test that seemed to flow the same way Jongdae and Junmyeon's conversation did.    
But it wasn't uncomfortable or anything. Jongdae hadn't to talked to someone who wasn't Baekhyun or his mother in like, a day. He was a socialite. He took the most awkward people even- lumps of coal- and polished away with easy flirting until they became a diamond who would bend under him. He had a way of making people feel comfortable. His friends complained about it; that if they went to the bar with him, they'd get abandoned in favour of some stranger. 

So Jongdae could talk to Junmyeon, naturally. Not that Junmyeon seemed like an uncomfortable lump of coal- far from it. He could talk about anything besides himself, and Jongdae liked it. 

They descended the mountain when it felt right, the wind had picked up, picked at Jongdae's flesh until it was less a simmering discomfort and more a stabbing pain. HIs sister's gloves were in her pocket, he realised. It was dark, winter, and he could somewhat tell that they were knitted by hand. 

They fitted him, but there was something itchy and dried at the seams of them. It made him shiver a bit- whatever it was felt like freezer dried cottonwool. He took them off. It didn't feel right. 

"Cold?" Junmyeon asked, eyes not gleaming with the moon, teeth doing so instead. 

"What, aren't you?"

They parted ways at the base, where there was a wooden sign with a really simple picture of someone hiking on it. No crosses. Years back, there had been a cross sign too- 'place of prayer'. It was hardly a place anymore, let alone a holy one. Jongdae didn't linger, but Junmyeon did, which was sweet of him. 

Jongdae walked quicker when he passed the Do residence, it's sunroom. There was no need. Nothing could be seen, not just because it was late, but because nothing could be felt, either. Its windows remained arching. At one point, Jongdae would have found this surprising, that one point being last night, when the house looked so useless and vulnerable, like Kyungsoo himself.

He thought to ask his mother about this when he got home, as Kyungsoo had been there the previous year, with his book s and their crackly-like-vinyl spines. He'd looked older, still frail. In his case, older meant that his face grew longer and the skin stretched across it more desperately. HIs skin was like elastic wrapping him up, knowing very well it would snap at some point and expose his bones, cheekbones like antlers, they'd catch the light so well. A more mature corpse didn't look any less dead. 

Jongdae hadn't seen im at all this year, and boy, had he looked. Kyungsoo's glass square of a world was unoccupied, though it was hard to believe that he upped and left at all. He knew his place as much as anyone else. 

Jongdae had to walk through the dining room to get to the sitting room at home. There were pictures of him and Sunyoung, his sister, cramped on the wall. Their eyes followed him in the sense that they were also directionless. 

He looked happy in the photos. Genuinely. 

Sunyoung, well. She'd been weird since the day she was born. It should have been a sign. She was holding a tractor in one picture, yellow and blue, between her pink hands. Her face squished and compressed to accommodate her smile. Overwhelming.

She was on the steps. Her pink shoes(match her hands) could only extend over one step, she was that small. In the background, there was the raised circle and the box. You couldn't see the Virgin Mary. It had a head back then, in any case.

It was cloudy enough that she didn't have a shadow- just a watery pool of grey. Jongdae didn't have to care about it, but he did so in spades. 

Nothing else cramped the dining room, other than visitors, though there weren't any that night. There tended not to be. It was small and dark and curtained, empty space adorned.

Jongdae pushed the sitting room door open until it clicked off the latch. His mother was on the arm chair today, bowl of pecans balancing next to her on the seat. Oh, and she had clingfilm layering her face. She blinked at him, her eyelashes making the plastic rustle. She knew what he'd say. 

"It's a skincare method from japan," she explained, "to stop wrinkles."

He sat on the sofa, sighed.

"Dermatologists agree that it works," she said. 

"Do they now." Wheel of Fortune was on, though it was a rerun- Jongdae could never forget that one contestant's dress- wide and luminous yellow, with red dots. Winceworthy.

He forgot to ask about the Dos. He almost forgot to shuffle off the bed, even. 

 

~~~~

 

He'd forgotten to take his coat off somehow. Don't ask. 

It shone purple from the morning light, draped off the side of the bed so the gloves had tipped out onto the plasticky floorboards. 

Jongdae must say, he hadn't expected the dried stuff at the bottom to be old blood. Maybe he should've; Sunyoung was always strange. And it was right there- blood blotches through the knitwear. 

Sunyoung died last year.

The worst part was the waiting- there weren't any hospitals nearby, and so the ambulance came almost two hours after she'd bled for the last time. She hadn't been touched. Her skin, apart from the dried blood around her mouth, was spotless. A packet of pink flesh was on the floor by her head, some of her brown hair sticking to it; it was her tongue, rosy from losing its red colour, having been bitten off. 

She'd stepped into the house, dropped her bag, "I'm home," she'd called, and then proceeded to die.

They couldn't figure it out. She never was a medically sick girl. Jongdae wasn't dumb though, he knew it was something to do with her brain. 

In any case, the gloves were on the floor, to be kicked under the bed. Jongdae took his time sitting up. He threw the coat under the bed along with them, for good measure. A poster slipped off his wall. It had been above his desk, for some high school recital. It made an alarming noise before resting on the desks shadow, absorbing it. 

It was sunny out, and that's why his hands looked so long on the sheets, elongated with their own shadows, spindly like the desk's one too. The birds weren't chirping. They rarely showed up in the first place. But the wind went in circles, and it sounded warm; like it'd sludge the snow. The hill was visible, somewhat. It was beyond the Dos and the town, covered in shrubbery and trees. The shrine was up there, somewhere. Jongdae thought of Junmyeon when he gave the thing brief glances, about how he'd talked so sure of himself, and it hadn't seemed fake. He was handsome, obviously. Short but handsome. Maybe that added to his cuteness, Jongdae didn't know. But he liked, to be honest, him- in that curious way that you like the sound of books you should read but might never get around to. 

Though maybe the metaphor wasn't so accurate. A few minutes later, Jongdae left the house to seek him up on the hill, like yesterday. Optimistic as always. 

 

Junmyeon found him in the end. By the signs without crosses anymore, he'd been waiting, as if he knew Jongdae was looking for him. Or maybe they both wanted the same thing- he'd been freezing, hands framing his face, his gloves white and knitted. Probably uncomfortable. He looked so cold, god. Jongdae grinned when he could, through the ice that digged its way under his skin and his own nervousness. 

"Hey, stranger," he said, "how come you're not 80 years old like the rest of us?"

Junmyeon gave him the side eye, then smiled. "You have no wrinkles at 80? Doctors are shocked," he started on up the hill, planting his shoes in the dirt just as he did yesterday. It was sunny, as mentioned, the kind to scald you until you felt cold. Winter break was always miserable in this part of Korea. Back at university, Jongdae had only spent one week where it snowed, and that was a simple matter of wearing hoodies that didn't fit you, if you hadn't been already. Baekhyun had a tall girlfriend who lended him coats and stuff, and he'd complain that it should be the other way around, though there was no way it could work with her type of figure. Jongdae never bought clothes that particularly fit him anyway. It was all very easy. 

When he was younger though, he'd still come up to the shrine in the winter- he couldn't for the love of god remember why. But none of his old boots or coats fit him anymore. Sunyoung was the tall child, so hers did anyway. Her adult coat that she'd left on the banister before she died. Junmyeon didn't mention Jongdae's purple coat, it didn't need to matter.

They went up to the shrine and sat down, shot the bull some more. Flirting was an easy game when you knew how. But there was a push and pull that meant you could never get satisfyingly close, dancing around topics, keeping the very same distance. Junmyeon had brought a bag of m&ms which Jongdae ate most of, he'd brush their fingers when he moved to get one. And another. And another. And another. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

He didn't know why he did it, which wouldn't be a problem, except it was a lie. He knew exactly why he did it. Junmyeon was nice, very there. Jongdae was a flirt. He'd get anyone all hook and line and sinker. It was a match made in heaven, and the shrine sure was the closest thing to it in the damn town even though its holy figure was headless. 

Two weeks. Give Jongdae the eleven more days until he got back on the train, and he'd have Junmyeon. It would be great, in two weeks, but for now Jongdae had to keep his patience and charm his way to the finish line. 

He didn't get anything from Junmyeon that day, even though it would've been all too convenient to have his number. But they knew to stare extra hard in the mirror in the morning, to pluck at their flyaways and hope their eyes were just bloodshot from sleep, so they'd look good for their walk up to the shrine- so they could impress each other. That was enough to work with, as far as Jongdae was concerned(and he wasn't, really). 

 

~~~~

 

By Christmas, it was readily known that they were an item, kinda. Not an item packaged together with couple moments and cheesy shit like that, but an item that just sorta ended up being thrown into the same shopping bag, taking up the same space. It was really nice in all fairness. They didn't do much, which was aggravating. It was all the compliments that could've meant more that solidified it. 

Jongdae picked at his stringy roast chicken, and wondered where Junmyeon was eating his Christmas dinner. He was laser beaming holes through the grey crockery with his eyes. His mother also looked grey, coldblooded, as she served out these malformed vegetables that had been "honey roasted" in a boat of a pan. If Junmyeon had been there, he wouldn't be grey, though maybe... The lamps were awful, off-colour, offered little to no light. They'd make anyone look grainy. But Junmyeon could look good in the dark, and he had done when they stayed out late- freezing. He'd make the dinner more interesting. He'd get on with Jongdae's mother. Charm her just the same, probably unknowingly. But he wasn't there, obviously, if he was in attendance Jongdae wouldn't be having some extended inner monologue about it. He sighed, and for the ninth time since stabbing a sad carrot with his fork, thought about Junmyeon's lips(and what they would feel like, yeah).

 

~~~~

 

He didn't get much for Christmas. Not many people in their twenties do, even ones as adored as Jongdae. HIs mother gave him some money in a birthday card, Baekhyun gave him a call to the house phone. It was pearly pink on the receiver, looked like a mail order novelty phone, one mermaids would use if they wouldn't have to electrocute themselves in the process. Jongdae carried the handset, spaghetti wire and receiver up to his room so his mother couldn't hear Baekhyun talk. Fuck, Baekhyun really said some outlandish things. In quick succession, rapid-fire speed, like he'd forget an innuendo if he didn't say it fast enough. He sounded distant- not because he was distant, but because he'd lost his voice from sledding with his boyfriend, and Chanyeol, who'd brought an old car bonnet he'd found that was curly enough to slide down the park's slopes on. Jongdae wished he could've lost his voice, wished he could've been there to see Baekhyun give himself third degree burns when he fell into the piles of frosted nitrogen that they called snow. But Junmyeon could get the job done just as well, if not better; when he turned away and his skin twisted around his neck, his windpipe poked out, that made Jongdae a bit fuzzy brained sometimes. 

"Happy Christmas, loser," was the first thing Baekhyun said to him, who didn't understand that 'Merry Christmas' sounded much better. All things considered, _  he  _ was the loser. "You're lucky I'm even calling you," he then said. Jongdae didn't need to ask why- "Zitao's in the other room skyping his parents."

"You still avoiding them?" Jongdae asked, partially amused. Baekhyun's chronic fear of any commitment killed him at times. Zitao was his first "proper relationship", and he was desperately afraid of fucking it up. He had a little bit of self awareness. He knew that Zitao's parents would be disappointed to see some twink-sized pervert on their laptop screen. 

"Oh, of course. I still can't afford that psychologist to help me out with my... issues," Baekhyun said, completely joking but straight voiced, "But hey, you'll listen to me, right?"

Jongdae coughed and deepened his voice until he sounded old and grouchy. "After months of sessions, I've come to conclusion that the only issue is your mouth, and I've prescribed you with some duct tape."

Baekhyun laughed lightly, probably opening a window as Jongdae could hear the traffic and sleet, the noise mixed together until you couldn't separate them. Baekhyun's voice slid through like an axe, not a knife. "So, what's up over there?"

Jongdae didn't really want to tell him, but he couldn't figure out why. Maybe he was ashamed that he didn't have Junmyeon yet. He'd always have someone when they talked about such things, blowing up his phone or trying to play it cool, though they'd never outlive his patience. But Junmyeon was different. Not in a cheesy way-- in a frustrating way. They were never close enough. To think that Jongdae didn't belong to him yet, with his prowess in flirting, was pretty embarrassing. His brain whirred and ran(it had always been running, maybe) to come up with something, anything. "Kyungsoo's gone," his brain spat out, surprising his forgetful self. He'd almost lost that conflict of interest under images of pale hands that went on for long, too short from Junmyeon, too long from Jongdae. 

Baekhyun forgot the fine details of Jongdae's life. It wasn't his or Zitao's, after all. "That kid in the haunted house, right?" but he knew, sometimes. He wasn't a bad friend- far from it. He listened and cared when it interested him; joked about it when it didn't. But if Jongdae spoke with some seriousness, he'd listen willingly, he'd take it seriously too. Jongdae was grateful. Even though he wouldn't describe the situation in quite the same way. 

"I mean," Jongdae scratched behind his ear, "You're not wrong, I guess."

"You actually think he went  _ outside _ ?" this is where Jongdae imagined that Baekhyun shook the hair out of his eyes, "What a crazy world," unsarcastic.

"Maybe he died. He basically disappeared, anyway."

"That's wild. Okay, I have to go, see you later, stupid," Baekhyun said just as a door could be heard opening. Jongdae could guess what they could get up to, thank god Baekhyun actually remembered to hang up the damn phone this time. Jongdae had nightmares for weeks after last time. He could never bring himself to quit the call himself. 

The beeping tone rendered him temporarily deaf. He stumbled downstairs and put the receiver back, tried not to think of any other receivers, tried not to think about himself receiving, though like his dick, it was increasingly hard. Junmyeon would, could be so good to him.

In the shower that night, he pushed his fingers into himself, tried to keep his mouth shut before he came. 

"Ah-- Junmyeon, Junmyeon, Junmyeon--"

 

~~~~

 

They were out together. Jongdae had burned through three of his eleven days with nothing to call home about, or take home. He didn't have any reason to feel as light as he did. The air was heavier, stacked heavily onto itself so it weighed your lungs down like dead weight. He was breathless for numerous reasons that night. 

Junmyeon had been controllably distant from the start. He'd caught on, but it wasn't enough, it could never be with his face. His eyes that rolled whenever Jongdae said something stupid. He liked driving Jongdae up a wall; that much was obvious. It was enough to work with. 

They weren't hiking up to the shrine, though Jongdae had this feeling- this feeling like they should've been instead of sitting in some field, which they were currently doing. They could see the hill if they looked back, but had been too lazy to climb up. Boxing Day. 

"Please don't," Jongdae threw Sunyoung's coat onto the floor and bent to sit down on it, not wanting a wet ass in quite this way, "tell me you're going to start talking all cheesy about the stars now." The north star was just above his head, so if he looked up and it pillared down it'd splinter right through his forehead and fry his brain. But otherwise, the stars weren't too blatant out here, though there certainly wasn't any light pollution. 

Junmyeon laughed and moved a bit closer. They weren't exactly pressed together, but it had intentions, maybe. His hair dipped down his forehead in a few messy swoops, as he turned to Jongdae. "You think I'd talk about cheesy stuff with you?"

"I'd gag," Jongdae agreed. "But you would if I could stand it."

Junmyeon just hummed and looked up, wished he could talk about the stars but the topic had long since been ruined. They didn't reflect in his eyes, which were pretty all the same. Jongdae reached out and took his hand, which was pale and cold, like marble but not porcelain because it wasn't perfectly smooth. Junmyeon looked him, mouth hanging open in mild surprise. He let Jongdae hold his hand for a few minutes then, silence. The silence was the worst part. Jongdae had gained no reassurance. 

He thought to drop it and move away, just to save himself from the shame it had brought him. He was, for the first time in his life, wordless. He needed recognition. Needed it.

"Your hand is cold," Junmyeon said softly, after letting a moment pass by. 

"Yours too," Jongdae responded, for lack of anything else to say. He'd be warmer if he'd let go and stuck his hand into some post-breakup double fudge ice cream, and the feeling would be the same if they broke apart, but they didn't because it never really was about the temperature of his fucking skin anyway. 

"Well, this certainly was the perfect day to forget my gloves," Junmyeon said, eyes scrunched. He wiggled his fingers in Jongdae's grasp. It felt spidery and light, and Jongdae suppressed a shiver.

He hadn't decided if he was happy or not yet. He had acceptance, which previously, had meant a whole deal to him. But there was more to crave, a thing specific to Junmyeon- an attribute that seemed unfair on the rest of Jongdae's entourage. They couldn't compete with him; his full voice, soft around the corners but not around the edges, eyes set but not deep, figue small but not frail, waist skinny but without Jongdae's hands looped around them. Sparklers shoved down Jongdae's throat that burned pretty and harmed him only inside because he couldn't pluck them out and hold them and see how pretty they really were. How pretty they could be for him, just him. But Jongdae didn't hold the lighter, and Junmyeon was complete on his own, meters away inspecting the shrine or looking for crickets in the reeds. Jongdae was jealous. He'd always forget bits of himself in places, scatterbrained. Maybe Junmyeon would have some completeness to share. 

"We should do this again sometime," Junmyeon said as they walked hand in hand back to the signs, where the roads crossed and he tended to linger, and they both knew what he was referring to. The blood rushed to Jongdae's head, pleased. It'd have to be soon, he thought, there wasn't long left but he'd need it either way. 

"I'm glad you agree," he replied, grinning. A breeze passed. Their arms swung. His face cracked apart from one fucking ear to the other. 

He hadn't realised it fully until he lay cold in the bed that night, but wanting Junmyeon was special too, an attribute he carried hot in his head- he'd continue to want, no, not want, love. If he heard it from anyone else's mouth, he'd have gagged. Didn't stop him either way.

 

~~~~

 

They held hands when their circumstances would let them, and even when they wouldn't, and they'd stand in the same spot because it took their hands to climb up to the next, looking down at the town. Junmyeon reached for him most of the time. That's what killed Jongdae the most- how Junmyeon looked when he took what he wanted, whether it was pink lemonade out of the petrol station's cola branded cooler or Jongdae's hand with a cold breeze.

They'd gone to the one shop in the town- aforementioned petrol station, and a woman stood by the gas pumps with a pinstriped suit that had lines straight from repeated ironing, the first woman Jongdae had seen, besides his mother, during the break. She must've been passing through on business. Her eyes followed them as they stepped through the automatic doors, even. Junmyeon had bought an ice cream for the laugh. He was delighted with himself as his tongue stuck to the top layer, frosty, and he gargled out his sentences, which  still sounded full and stupid. He was stupid sometimes, but it was charming and had a way of making you laugh, like when your little cousins drew on the wallpaper in crayons they'd leave to melt on the radiator later in waxy clumps. 

Sometimes they'd go to the fields where cows used to roam. There was a butcher before there was a train to a district with better shopping. It stood still near the fields, with its boards and maroon sign, squiggly font. They used to sell sour beef. Since then the cows have all been slaughtered or bred into common sense, leaving the fields behind. The torn up grass lay in pools in their old prisons, to look at when bored. Junmyeon and Jongdae would climb up on the three-bar metal gates and dangle their feet off, with their short frames taking up little to nothing, and they could fall but they stayed connected by their hands. If they were to fall, it'd be Jongdae's fault, Junmyeon would say- Jongdae was jittery in all his limbs. He'd die if you shouted boo at him. 

He wanted to take photos of the fields, their futility and boringness was almost interesting, a painter would add orange instead of blue while shading the snow because it seemed to burn when the sun rose up. Burn itself into a permanent layer of cold, hard rock that had once been ice; one you couldn't dig through or melt. Junmyeon had wanted to make a snow angel, Jongdae said no, you idiot, the cows used to shit in there. 

So they did all these things that made no sense in their interestingness, did all these things, and all Jongdae thought about was how much he wanted to kiss Junmyeon and how utterly implausible it seemed. He was fixed to the ground, a king moving one space at a time, all check- unable to make the next move under his own rules. They were the only ones that mattered to him, after all(no, that's not right- someone's grabbed your hand and set off your timer). 

 

~~~~

 

He'd gotten the internet up and running on his laptop again. It was new and round, not square shaped, as all modern technology tended to be. The router was the problem. It sputtered and whirred from lack of use, like a dial up machine in a PC Bang. The icons all flashed green, empty promises, nothing worked for a few minutes, until a slow river of messages seeped into Jongdae's notifications bar. Most were spam, but then there were e-cards from various withering relatives and some cousins who believed in ironic humour, only when impersonal. His university sent out a newsletter that undoubtedly claimed more of the same "developments" that had yet to take shape. 

ld thing a little too hard. Jongdae sighed and carried his laptop down to the kitchen table, defeated. The modem was plugged in by the landline, which lay uncomfortably close to the sink. He waited for the page to reload. 

His mind wandered to Junmyeon. Nothing unusual. 

His mother passed through the kitchen, and upon noticing Jongdae's smile, took to looking at him questioningly. Her coffee mug was raised, covering her mouth that curled downwards. Jongdae didn't need x-ray vision to tell; being her son was knowledge enough. 

His smile fell in the end. It was this habit of his. 

 

~~~~

 

It felt like a friday. Jongdae hadn't realised it actually was one until he saw 'Fri' on his phone's lockscreen, which was a nice coincidence. 

It felt like a friday, maybe because they'd both known it was one, in a way. Jongdae could tell generally. His last class was early, and he'd take the bus out at least five blocks away from his dorm so no one would know who he was. It was therapeutic and kept the soul satisfied. He liked to walk into a room full of new faces to scan, even if they didn't look at him. He liked avoiding his classmates and close friends out of nothing but exhaustion. He could ruin things with a stranger and it wouldn't matter. His passport was everything to him, hand held out while the bouncer stamped it with red, or dark green ink. A friday was a day of week nights, and a friday night was in a whole other league. He couldn't match the feeling if he tried.

But he didn't need to, when it came to Junmyeon. 

The clouds were obtrusive over the sun, and sun splattered on the snow occasionally. They were sat up high on a gate. Jongdae thought he might aswell have been up on the shrine, because he could see all that needed to be seen, not in matchstick proportions, though Junmyeon was small. A camera could've made his day. He'd take a picture of Junmyeon watching the clouds drag away with the tide. His hair was a bit curly, just a little bit, like when your hair frizzed with the sea air. Though that wasn't around, Junmyeon just found it in him to replicate the look and become more endearing. Somehow. 

"Looks like it'll rain soon," Junmyeon said, quiet because they were close enough to forget about being heard. Practically propped up against each other- if a sudden wind blew through, they'd topple backwards like they were being gunned down. 

"I don't mind," Jongdae told him, honestly. Junmyeon's lips curled up. His face seemed to invert when he smiled. This was another thing that killed Jongdae. 

"You never do."

"How could I?" It occurred to Jongdae that it sounded like he was joking, so he squeezed Junmyeon's hand and hoped for the best. It could deliver in any form, the voice determined it all. 

Subconsciously, he turned, and found that Junmyeon was already watching him. Their eyes met. Nothing magical happened, Jongdae's heart didn't start thumping like he'd injected some heroin, he just felt like a butterfly pinned to be inspected, he couldn't help but feel a little self conscious when being looked at with such blatantness.

Junmyeon let go of his hand, shaking his head and smiling. "Sorry," he said, "I'd fall off if I used both of my hands," and then he leaned into the space between them, one arm forward to loop around the bar, to keep him stable. 

Jongdae's insides were halfway between melting and freezing. In the end, they did both, shoulders slumping and hands straining. He was sweating but that wasn't the point. Junmyeon reached out and held his jaw, tilting his head. 

A few seconds passed. 

"Your lips are cold," Junmyeon said, just millimeters away from them, hovering. He was testing Jongdae. He wanted to know if he'd be the one this time. 

Jongdae would give him what he wanted- another kiss, slower and warmer. The whole time he could only wish he'd taken gymnastics with Sunyoung, so he could balance on the fucking bar with no hands, and he'd be free to run up and down Junmyeon's chest, through his hair, pressing into his jaw. He wobbled at one point and Junmyeon grabbed his shoulder, laughing breathlessly. He wished he could do better for Junmyeon's sake. But then again, neither of them seemed to mind. 

It felt like a friday, good friday, the best kind- one for an optimist. Jongdae didn't feel cheap or used, just running off of happiness and adrenaline and ugly things, like romance. He'd been accepted-- had affected Junmyeon in the same way Junmyeon had affected him. Even layers below their messy hair caused by eager hands, through their roots, through their skulls, down to their brains, they'd done something to each other and felt the effects. 

That was enough, as far as Jongdae was concerned. 

 

~~~~

 

He slammed his bedroom door shut, the receiver tucked under his arm and the phone pressed to his ear. The buttons would be imprinted on his jaw at this rate. He had to let his nervous excitement out in some way, and it would be with Self Mutilation By Phone Buttons. Baekhyun picked up on the sixth ring, just at the point where Jongdae would've hung up on any other day. Like he'd known. 

"Baekhyun," he breathed, "I just kissed a guy."

"Ha! Even down there you're desperate," Baekhyun replied instantly. After letting his insult linger for a beat too long, he continued, "Tell me now."

Jongdae grinned and his giddiness drew him to wrap the spaghetti wire around his index finger, unwrapping it. He looked like a middleschool girl archetype, flopping down on his bed. A teddy bear slipped off the mattress with a soft thud. "His name's Junmyeon, you'd probably hate him."

"Did you say Junmyeon?"

"Yeah, why?"

Baekhyun hummed though it sounded like a blender through the reverb. He was still in the dorms, so the signal was awful on Jongdae's part. They pressed on. "Haven't you mentioned him before? A Kim Junmyeon, right?" 

Baekhyun had a lot of friends, and a lot of time to maintain closeness with them. Actually, he was a busy guy, but his time management skills were crazy good. He tended to mix up certain people in his little bubble of friends. Jongdae, his best friend "for life", was no exception, despite knowing each other the longest. Jongdae frowned; he hadn't known a Kim Junmyeon. 

He told Baekhyun this. There was a second of silence, followed by a shrug that Jongdae could only picture. He imagined Baekhyun's shoulders clicking out of their joints with a circular 'pop!'. He went a bit overboard with his shrugging, always. 

A minute later, Zitao probably just got out of the fucking shower, or finished taking a shit, or something- but Baekhyun had hung up to plague him and probably proposition him for sex. He was less clingy in person, surprisingly. 

Jongdae wrapped the spaghetti wire around the handset and pressed it into its plastic cradle, it was heavy with old machinery, weighing down his hands. He turned the door handle and nudged the rest open with his foot. His mother was on the other side, flinching away from the door, rubbing her ear.

She'd been listening in. She brushed a clump of hair to the other side of her head, it had fallen when she tilted her head to hear better. It looked taped to her scalp, ran black like ink up chromatography paper. Her face screamed scandalised. 

Jongdae didn't feel betrayed. He couldn't expect decency from her. The mermaid casing of the handset had never felt so cold, it forced the hairs on the back of his neck upright. They watched each other as if there was no form of communication between them, like two alley cats with puffed up manes, not daring to move. 

"We have to talk," she told him after a few more seconds of this, and her voice came out all slippery with each word, like her mouth was an old recorder that was greased with spit and slime. 

"Why should I talk to you?" Jongdae asked, not particularly confrontational. This was just how they conversed, on guard. He made to pass by her and leave her forgotten but she stuck a hand out and frowned gravely. 

"Please, Jongdae," she said, "tell me who you were just talking about."

"It's no big deal. I was going to tell you--"

"Just tell me his name," she begged, "say it again. That's all I want to hear about. I don't need the rest. His name, please."

Jongdae thought about lying, but his mother looked pained and painfully serious. 

It wasn't a good look on her, though she didn't seem to understand- she wore it often. As often as her white night dress that made her look like the Corpse Bride, her red slippers that managed to scream 'widower!' among other things. Every step she took in the house was quiet and soft. When Jongdae was young, she'd lock her room at night- just hers, with a big brass key that she kept on the top shelf with the shed ones. She thought Sunyoung and Jongdae hadn't known. There was no hiding anything in this house. 

She looked young and childish from where she stood now. The same night dress had turned grey in the wash, made her look like she was dressing up in her own mother's frocks, trying to replicate her own mother's sadness with her hooked nose and clenched jaw, eyes that the light would shine through like empty marbles if you caught them at the right angle. 

Jongdae told her the name out of pity. She flinched, more at his tone than what was said. 

"Kim Junmyeon," she said. The stairs sloped downwards behind her, they were at the peak of the house. If she stepped back she'd topple in a mess of linen. The lights weren't on in the attic's landing, but they didn't need to be, Jongdae had had his lamp on by his desk and it was enough. He was facing away, imagining that the darkness elongated his features as it did to his mother. She'd always looked more like him than Sunyoung. In his old white parka, on their way up to the shrine, they'd never looked more related. She was always small and compressed like a flowerbud- people would ask if she was Jongdae's old sister. Tired but not old. 

She'd laugh and say no. It never was a compliment, she knew. 

"Describe him," she told Jongdae, taking his hand and pulling him into his room again. Her legs looked veiny like a mule's, sticking out of the bottom of her dress. It whisped about her, seemed to be floating in its lightness. 

"Tell me why," Jongdae responded as he watched his mother close the door behind her. He was old enough to question things, he thought.

His mother was never nosy in this way. There were instances where she'd want to drive him to his friends' houses so she could talk to their parents, she'd call him and her voice would crackle over the bad signal, like duck skin after roasting for too long. She'd ask him about his romance life. Did he have a girlfriend? A boyfriend, maybe? Had Mrs. Jung's daughter called him yet, like she said she would? 

The difference was that she'd caught him offguard this time. She took a seat on his duvet and perched with her back hunched. Sometimes she'd look behind her, out the window. Jongdae followed her eyes and saw nothing but darkness, they were looking at different things. 

"Please, just tell me."

Jongdae sighed. "He has a round shaped face, I guess... fluffy brown hair. Same height as me. Round eyes. He's a year older."

His mother's face twisted painfully. Her shoulders popped up and out as she stood up, straight. Her posture was impeccable, Jongdae's used to be, but camera straps weighed his spine into a permanent bend by the time he could afford fancier, heavier cameras. 

She walked past him. Rushed, maybe. "Get a coat," she told him, "meet me at the front door."

"Why?" 

"We don't have the time now-"

"Tell me, please," Jongdae begged, and his eyes went all wide on command. She exhaled. 

"Don't you remember Sunyoung's... friend?"

Jongdae's whole body shuttered. He gestured for her to go, beating himself up-- how could he forget? His coat was on his shoulders, but he had to fumble with the buttons as he followed his mother downstairs. She put her slippers on. Went out in her night dress. Jongdae wasn't sure who she was fretting over the most.

They didn't like to talk about Sunyoung. It meant a lot that she said her name, to be honest. For weeks after, it was almost as though nothing happened, because they wouldn't let it sink in. Jongdae had walked into Sunyoung's room one night, just to look at a small graveyard with pink walls. His mother had been sitting on a novelty chair, made for those semi-lifesized dolls. She barely fit in it, it was short enough that her legs were folded beneath it and her hair trailed across the floor. She didn't turn around. Gave him the time to leave without consequence. 

He did as he was told. 

 

~~~~

 

The outside air was cold, spread out so it could bear through your flesh. The sky was dark like you couldn't describe it. Jongdae's mother held an industrial torch in her fist, it stayed still as they walked quickly, pooling yellow along the dusty old path. The grass shook ever so often. 

Jongdae felt like crying.

He'd had an imaginary friend as a kid, who he couldn't recall much of. The associated memories gave him some things to go on- this friend was tall to him, young but an adult nonetheless, his face was a huge blank that couldn't be filled for years. It was unnecessary. He just wanted someone to talk to, he just needed ears and a mouth, the rest could be empty space for all he cared. 

He only saw his friend once, fully. It was a few days after Sunyoung's eighth birthday; he remembered because they kept asking her age at the kitchen table where she was seated. They, being two policemen with little notepads. One held his pencil down near the lead point. He wrote furiously as Sunyoung listed things between quiet begs of "please, can we do this at the shrine?". The memory was foggy. All Jongdae could remember was the crying and the picture, the picture lying on the table inbetween the salt shakers. 

The picture was a quick drawing of the man Sunyoung had described. Round eyes and fistfuls of puffy hair and a round face. His friend. 

They never could find Sunyoung's stalker. She claimed he'd never left. 

They approached the shrine, lit up only by torchlight. If you squinted you could tell yourself that Sunyoung was there, sitting on the steps. You could spin anything out of darkness, it was all possibility and no information.

Jongdae's mother let out a sob when she saw the virgin mary; her headless neck. 

"I knew it," she said, voice laced with rage and fear. She looked so small, like she could sit in the statue's place and you'd think the paint was a little chipped, nothing more. Her shoulders dipped down in a 'U' shape as she took small steps closer to the box. "It couldn't have been intact, not in his presence." 

Jongdae didn't need to ask who's, so he didn't. He watched with something like distanced fear as his mother placed her hand atop the guillotined neck. It looked odd without the head- like a shapeless stump. 

"That must be why," she paused, seeming to remember that Jongdae was there, "that must be why the Dos left. They didn't even warn me, I would've followed." 

They both knew then, that the place was no longer safe, that they couldn't linger and reminisce as easy as it would be. Jongdae took his mother's hand, tried to encourage her to swing the torch somewhere, anywhere else. She hesitated and made to leave at least twice before actually turning away, sad like an old scrap heap of a car that had to be pushed to start. Nothing but sorrow. She could've watched Jongdae die there and it wouldn't worsen the situation. 

Life as she knew it was over. She'd have to move out of town, which once was inhabited, which once had a safe place that was destroyed so readily. She'd known nothing but the empty fields and the quiet nights and the stunted way she raised her kids. Removing a bandaid harshly, leaving a worse wound then before; Sunyoung's stalker was no longer a retired threat. She couldn't even have all that, after all she'd been through. 

They tried their way back to the house under a guise of obliviousness. Passing by the Do's, a crow perched on the chimney squealed at them like something out of a B-rate horror movie. They didn't mention it because they weren't talking. Jongdae knew his mother was jealous of him- he could go back to his college where he belonged, surrounded by friends. He could up and ready, abandon her if he so pleased. And she'd deserve it, in a way. She never extricated them. Why should he do it for her?

As the house came into view, it was readily apparent that the porch lights weren't on. They churned out a sickly light that cast short shadows. 

Junmyeon was waiting for them on the porch step.

He fanned a hand by his offcoloured face. It flip flopped back and forth in a way that contorted the shadows, making skinny old strips of light that bended with his skin. He had a mean smile on; mean in its normalcy. Nothing had changed. All that changed was Jongdae's perspective on the situation. He thought, as he watched Junmyeon bundle his hands in his lap, that he could've been the stalkee. That these sick people would do anything to terrorize a family. 

But he was still small and shivering, it was always cold, but colder at night in absence of certain things. His frame was something like a girl's, maybe- the set of his waist narrower than his shoulders, body pointing in a downward pike. Smoothlined, with limbs. He watched Jongdae, who watched right back, just the same. The churning of Jongdae's flesh didn't reach the pit in his stomach. Gaping, landslide. In this moment, he was completely incomplete. There was nothing he could do but feel horrified; he wasn't even sad, in a way. This thing before him was a monster- one that slinked around and ripped faces clean off the bone. The monster would zip up and play dollhouse to lure you, but it'd spit gold if you slashed hard enough, skin would melt apart to reveal Jongdae's boyfriend in all his previous, pitiful glory. Junmyeon would step out from the carcass and be just the same. This man was a video game boss- a Team Rocket admin- he wasn't Junmyeon, he never could be(but if this man wasn't Junmyeon, then who was? Did he even exist?). 

He had these light tan dresspants on that had two straight lines down the center of the legs; uncuffed at the ends. He licked his lips before speaking. They were glossy and pink, and still insanely attractive. "Hey," he nodded to Jongdae's mother, who had begun to look ready to kill, "long time no see." 

She hadn't seen him before in her life. Only Sunyoung had- complained about a man waiting for her outside of the school gates, she said she'd beg the teachers to let her stay in the classrooms until the man left. The school caught on, they knew she had a stalker; the principle had walked down in a grey suit jacket that she hadn't been wearing previously. She walked down the drive of the school and found nothing, but Sunyoung wouldn't accept this answer-- she jabbed the window and it left grease stains, wailing "he's there, he's there." Hysterical. 

She said he was always there, standing between the kitchen walls, barefooted so the cold would rush up from the blue tiles. He'd stand in the corner when she turned her sheets in the night. 

She said she was surprised she was alive. 

Rosary beads. Bible. With clarity that only she had found, she'd light candles on the mantelpiece and burn incense with the wilting flames, let the smoke trail behind her on her way up the stairs. They used to eat breakfast together; bread and jam or butter or nutella. She kept to herself in her little teal school uniform. Left her knives- always used two- lying in a cross. No one knew when prayer became her method of coping. They only knew it didn't work, but distracted. A sugarpill could be enough for someone so broken. Anything more serious would seem pointless and outlandish. 

They should've moved, really. 

Jongdae saw him too, but it wasn't the same. He never felt fear around absences, not even Sunyoung's in early December, when she couldn't visit because she was exceptionally dead. 

Looking at Junmyeon now, he thought the cause of it could've been the sight of him. Jongdae braced himself. 

"Sorry about this, Jongdae," Junmyeon said, eyes flicking back and forth between his mother and him. "You wouldn't hate me if you knew why. Actually, this all started because you hate someone else."

Jongdae's mother let her breath hitch, and Jongdae didn't spare her a glance but he could hear her shiver in the air that it disrupted. "You absolute freak," she managed out with her reluctant voice. She was always more of a pacifist. Jongdae thought she'd run, to be completely honest. 

Her feet were weak, achilles heels with pulled tendons- she was a Do Kyungsoo as a little girl. Weak and frail and out of use, she only ever wore her red slippers and sandals. Maybe she was scared her limbs would detach and fall out of the sockets if she pushed herself. Maybe she was worried the guilt would kill her slowly, if she could turn and see Jongdae still by the porch from meters away. 

Junmyeon didn't look hurt at her comment; he'd probably been expecting it. He knew the family _so_ _well_ at this point, how could he not figure her out? Her two sides of the coin? "I don't want to delay this," he smiled in a way that turned Jongdae's brain to jelly. 

The click didn't register for a moment. It was a fell swoop, a collection of things that made it up. Junmyeon covered his mouth with his bad hand, which Jongdae had learned to be his left after watching him use chopsticks, the kind you got in light pink petrol station packaging with frozen shit, the kind you had to snap apart. His knuckles were worn, his veins ran purple.  His legs were apart slightly, so he looked like a lounging highschool boy on the bleachers- his face was as young, his stature as small as one's, not that of an adult's, in some ways, but there were angles that kept him an attractive man just the same. The clicking happened as he raised an arm. 

Jongdae didn't have much experience with guns. When he was a child, he was more of a grey foam sword sort of kid, rather than a toy rifle one. Sunyoung had a plastic handgun that took up both of her small hands, and it'd make these muted banging noises when you pulled the mechanical trigger. The tip was a plastic side, nothing more. She didn't need pellets to hurt you. When she was mad she'd often stay silent, but once Jongdae had gone into her room without asking, had stolen some of her pokemon cards that she didn't pay much heed to- she grabbed his wrist and sunk her nails in. When in trouble, she'd cry guilty tears.

Junmyeon didn't seem very guilty about his own method of pain, though. He didn't seem gleeful either. There was no way he was happy with himself, more at the situation; giddiness invaded his eyes and turned them creased at the edges and wild, like a maniac. He'd raised a pistol, along with his hand. The tip wasn't plastic. The barrel was swung. 

It was pointed at Jongdae's mother, who let out a short squeal before the bullet rang out. It streaked silver across the sky before colliding; Jongdae snapped his head away, he couldn't help it, even though his lungs had been worn raw from the way he'd yelled without processing it. His eyes were screwed shut and in his hands, he should run, should run- fuck, why couldn't he run?

Because he was fucking pissed off. He was pissed off enough to want an explanation, to scream 'you fucking weirdo!' in Junmyeon's face until there were tears in  _ someone's _ eyes. A dying wish if things were to happen Junmyeon's way, which they undoubtedly would.  

"Jongdae," Junmyeon breathed, and it was the only sound he could pick out through the thick air and the mess of his brain, which felt like a hose on max power that no one held, that writhed and turned and twisted uncontrollably, washing his insides away. "Haven't I told you I love you?" he said softly- "And you love me, right?"

Jongdae let his eyelids flick back. His vision pixelled in, fumbling; he was looking into the darkness of the town. The smell of messed insides and bile made him want to get sick, among other things. He tried to look at Junmyeon without seeing his mother but there was a red stain in the corner of his eye, and if seeing it was bad, ignoring it was even worse. Ignoring her, he should say. 

Junmyeon looked much of the same. He was still fanning his face, other hand resting on his knee. The gun had been put away but its presence still spiked into Jongdae's gut. "What the fuck kind of question is that?" he said without even realising it, and his voice was so scathing that Junmyeon's eyes widened oddly. "You're off your fucking head if you think that I could still love you! What the fuck!"

"You do though," Junmyeon told him. "You just don't understand yet."

"Why--"

"Come take a walk with me," Junmyeon said then, straightening up his back and tying a lace sloppily. "I can explain some things- I'll answer anything. Please?"

Jongdae gave him a look, he imagined his face was as adamantly enraged as a corpse's, two dimensional and terrifying. Though he wasn't the one who could pull this off, he tried. "Tell me here," he said, "if you're so sure you could convince me."

He didn't want to be convinced. He didn't believe he could be, either. Jongdae was a pacifist by nurture, though, and he couldn't think of any other way to deal with an armed Junmyeon, he'd have to play along. 

He was curious too. Don't tell his conscience that- it'd cry in disappointment. 

"You've always hated your family," Junmyeon told him, he wasn't off mark. "So do I. And the town, and what it made of you- you hate that too, right? Can't stand yourself sometimes? I know everything about you, Jongdae. You don't need to deny it, or anything else."

Jongdae was alone now, he realised. The only surviving stalkee during this moment. His sister died. His mother followed suit. His father, well... 

He didn't like to think about it- he didn't like to think about anything, really- he was the final townsperson, the designated sufferer, the golden boy at the pity party. He'd shut himself off in a room for years and would try to avoid his friends' sympathy, both because it was an old act, and because he'd believe himself to be undeserving of it. There was a glimpse of his mother in him that shone through so vividly now. 

At odds with himself, despite his better judgement, Jongdae let Junmyeon continue.

"I've been trying to help you for years. It was so tiring, but I was willing to do it for you. I wanted to get rid of your worry, your stress- or the root of it, I guess. You hated your family, I took care of that. I didn't even need anything in return, but I got something anyway," he laughed breathlessly, "I still can't believe it... This couldn't have turned out any better. But if you want to know the one thing that I'm unsure about, I'll tell you. It's up to you whether you believe me.

You wonder why your old imaginary friend can affect real life, right? It's because I am a part of you, nothing more- there's no 'me' to me, I'm all you, all yours. I'm just a figment of your imagination. At the end of the day, you're the one who has all this power. You're the one who can kill people with your subconscious. It's you, it was always you."

It was a landslide that on collision, suffocated Jongdae until he learned how to breathe sand. All he could think was 'well, that makes sense' and it truly scared him. There was no bigger horror than the fear of oneself. 

Deep under his skin, where the spiders crawled and his muscles were composed of sour meat in hacks, he knew to the smallest extent- if he opened his mouth too wide or if his mother cut him hard enough black liquid would gush out; the badness inside of him that sloshed about and manifested itself in ignorance and hatred. He believed Junmyeon because Junmyeon was right, and he disbelieved him because he thought he'd had that badness contained, only to find it going around charming itself and imposing fear. 

Jongdae was terribly dependent. From childhood up until last year, he'd been raised as Sunyoung's metaphorical wheelchair chauffeur. It had been a relief after she died. He didn't think about it in that way last January when he'd sent a new years text to a chopped number, but it was- no more coaxing her down to see him, no more watching her kill their mother with worry, no more nails digging deep into his skin, no more bibles and prayers and rosary beads that swung back and forth from where they hung in empty rooms. No more spotlights cast away from him. His mother kept up the pretense that she had always cared about his wellbeing, but with more ferocity. 

Long ago, Jongdae had already decided that Sunyoung was the one who killed the family. Not him. 

God, he really was the worst. 

"N-not here," he croaked, knowing that he couldn't hide anything from Junmyeon anyway. It all made too much sense- that stain on his vision and those ashes on the shrine. "Not here... She's-"

Junmyeon's eyes went very soft, very suddenly. "Oh, of course," he cut in, "that's why I said we could take a walk."

~~~~

Thirty minutes later, Jongdae was sat by Junmyeon on the shrine steps, head in his hands. His hair felt greasy through his fingers, but that couldn't exactly matter to him now. 

They were silent. All Jongdae could think, was that there was no way he'd go back now- that years down the line a commuter or a tourist would drive through the town and see a rotten mess of flesh wrapped up with some papery skin, they'd see the long black hair and the dried blood, and they'd call the police only to find she got shot in their childhood. Doctors would be stumped. They'd take her teeth out and try to find her family, but her son was also missing or dead or out of place, no matter how you looked at it- and her daughter had died in the very same house. His mother would become a spectacle and an urban legend.

Baekhyun could say that he'd known her son, once. 

Life would go on without his family. He didn't know if that extended to him, yet. He didn't want it to. To put Junmyeon's gift to waste. Revenge, he thought, was hardly ever worth it- even if it was broadly applied and undeserved, generally. 

He felt Junmyeon look at him, through adoring eyes, no doubt. "Hey, I wouldn't ruin your life, I could never do that... You can go back to university now and it'll all be much of the same."

Really, Jongdae just wanted to hug Baekhyun without explanation. He wanted to pass photography in autumn, and to be okay, unbroken. He was selfish enough to cause the death of two people. He could definitely do it. It was what he wanted, after all.

"I could take care of the body, and you wouldn't even have to see it. We'd meet at the train station and go back to Seoul. Really, I don't even have to be there at all."

It grew more enticing the more he heard. A part of his brain said, 'look how much this boy likes you', and he tried fervently to ignore the black liquid being fed to his blood, to his brain, infecting him and making him bad all over. Now that he knew what he was capable of, he thought he couldn't keep up this act of ignorance he'd maintained for years. He was bad. Junmyeon was proof of that. 

Sunyoung once told him she was scared she'd get too mad one day, she'd dig her nails too hard and slit his wrists with her bare hands. Now, he thought she must've fallen through, black liquid pouring onto the floor. By her mouth. Pooling with her tongue. She had it, too. But Jongdae was stronger. He was the top of the food chain, the executioner, judgement. He killed who was decidedly wrong. He could do it again, he was already thinking it- thinking of telling Junmyeon about his life and seeing what could be worked out. 

Why be scared of yourself when you were just looking out for yourself?

Junmyeon had completed him, filled out the holes in his brain with murkiness and understanding.      

 

~~~~

 

They got a nearly-empty carriage  on the train. There was an older woman with perched glasses near the back, reading a romance novel. She'd occasionally flip pages back and forth, as if she was taking notes. 

Junmyeon's side was pressed to Jongdae's. By them was the backpack Jongdae had brought with him on the way up, within it there was a plastic bag with his ruined converse. He wore Sunyoung's sneakers, they were all ragged and torn up and too big for him, but at least they didn't smell damp. It had been a long week, and Jongdae felt his eyes close before his vision even disappeared. He'd been caught on stillframe, his mind had been skipping with exhaustion. 

The glass of the window was hard as a diamond, and it pierced his skull with its coldness. He flopped to Junmyeon's shoulder, leaning his head on it. It was boney but warm, tolerable. Junmyeon seemed pleased anyway. 

"I should hate you," Jongdae told him, "I  _ do _ hate myself."         

"You shouldn't, you're great," Junmyeon replied. He was so far gone. "I love you, I always have, even when you were eight and obnoxious and you'd ignore me when you got bored of me."

"I can't remember," Jongdae smiled, "but I can imagine. God, you're cheesy."

Junmyeon shrugged so his shoulderbone thumped against Jongdae's skull, who whined. "Guess I'll start talking about the constellations now."

Jongdae whined louder(the woman gave him a judging look as she flipped a page again). 

 

~~~~

 

When Jongdae unlocked the dorm's door, Baekhyun was waiting just by it on the inside. He looked fussed and cheerful, his hair was so all-over-the-place you could lose a hand in it. His mouth went all boxy as he grinned. 

"You're back!" he said, unsurprisingly pulling Jongdae into a tight hug- he was always a clingy little bitch. Jongdae tried to breath through his squashed lungs. They felt like they were being sliced into by the sharp edges of his ribs. 

"Someone missed me," he said, rubbing circles into Baekhyun's back fondly. He felt nice today. 

"How was your mother?" Baekhyun then asked, whisking him away to the kitchen with his hand. It was cleaner than Jongdae had ever seen it. That was Baekhyun for you- always on top of everything. A tray of burnt cookies were on the counter by the open window, no doubt about to be eaten despite the charred edges.   
After everything, it was great to be back again- to see his dorm with its glaring plumbing problems and mold and broken drawers. To stand in his kitchen where the light filtered in through a skin of dust. To talk to Baekhyun as he always had. He couldn’t even feel too sore about the whole thing when it came down to it. A motorbike revved outside, the people next door were blasting some american pop singer, Baekhyun’s new Shoujo Jidai album had arrived and been unpackaged. Even though it was paused, it spun in their little kitchen radio with loud slicing noises. Mundane life was the best kind, as far as Jongdae was concerned. 

Baekhyun started filling the kettle. He hadn't noticed Junmyeon in the corner yet.

Jongdae gave him a winning smile as he replied, "Oh, you know. As annoying as ever."


End file.
